The Gunk is not an exciting video game. It is essentially a 3D puzzle platformer, except the platforming isn’t difficult and the puzzles mostly involve some very basic moving of object A to point B and hitting switch C to open up path D. It’s about 4 and a half hours long or so and most of the mechanics are revealed in the first hour and a half, leaving you with some very gentle iteration on those mechanics through the end of the game. This is not a game that you play breathlessly, glued to your controller as you try to perfect your actions and master its intricacies.
What The Gunk does have going for it is atmosphere. You play Rani, a scavenger cruising through the universe in a small space ship called The Bunny alongside her partner (business, life, and perhaps romantic, though that’s not made explicit) Becks. Rani is a spunky and adventurous young woman, which is demonstrated by the fact that she’s missing half of one of her arms due to having put herself in an inadvisable situation. She’s the doer of the pair. Becks is more levelheaded and cautious, and while Rani is out exploring she stays back on the ship and communicates via radio. They also have a culinary robot named Curt who cooks for you precisely once in the game but says “you got served” whenever you talk to him, which is an incredibly outdated reference that seems to be mined for absurdist humor.
Rani and Becks have landed on an apparently desolate planet because they picked up an energy signal from it. When they land they find that their instruments are malfunctioning and they soon figure out that it’s because of the eponymous gunk that floats in bubbling clouds of fluid all over the surface. Rani’s robot arm, named Pumpkin, can vacuum this gunk up and she learns that if she clears all the gunk out of an area the suppressed native plant life will bloom. This forms the essential loop that will carry you through the game. You reach an area, eliminate the gunk, and open new pathways to move forward.
As Rani and Becks try to unravel the mystery of the Gunk and figure out what’s going on with the planet and whether there’s anything they can take from it to sell back home you follow a mostly linear path through a series of somewhat similar environments. These generally start out barren and then become lush and organic after you’ve cleared away the Gunk. You mostly do this with Pumpkin but sometimes you’ll find an explosive plant you can use to blow up the Gunk in hard to reach places, or a few other means I won’t go into here because this is a short game and I don’t want to spoil the plot. The gameplay mostly consists of doing some basic platforming to either get to the Gunk and clear it, or to get to the thing you need to use to clear it, and then opening a new path by, for example, taking a fruit you’ve caused to grow and throwing it into a pool of liquid where it sprouts into a plant whose leaves you can jump on. It’s really not much more mechanically complex than that. There is some combat against some corrupted creatures, of which there are only a few forms, and that occupies about 10% of the game. You can also go back to camp to talk to Becks if you want, and you can upgrade your equipment with some mostly superfluous additions like the ability to heal by collecting certain resources or a more powerful blast from your glove that can stun or kill enemies. Speaking of collecting resources you’ll be doing that too. There are four kinds, organic, fiber, metal, and fiber. You’ll be sucking them up as you go, and there are some optional paths to get more resources which you can then spend on upgrades if you want. It gives you something to do in the environment and reasons to explore but it never gets particularly complex or difficult. The vacuuming animation is pretty satisfying though, so they got that right. You also use a scanner to scan things, which unlocks new upgrade blueprints for reasons that are never explained.
What they also got right is the feeling of the planet. The graphics are not the most realistic out there but they look very nice for a low budget project and the Gunk looks truly otherworldly. I’m not sure any other game has quite captured the effect you see when you suck it up with your glove. It’s neat. After you’ve cleared the Gunk the areas revert to a nice lush alien jungle look that’s very pleasant. The soundtrack is simple but also quite pleasant. Even the story is relatively pleasant. You'll unravel the mystery behind The Gunk and learn about the state of the universe and Earth along the way, but there are no grand revelations to be had, just some simple and straightforward storytelling. Rani and Becks are both likable enough character with decent voice actresses (though Becks pronounces the “L” in solder, which is a bit jarring and shows that the game was not directed by native English speakers) and there’s enough conflict to keep things moving but they mostly like each other and get along. A moment towards the end of the game where they are out of contact for a while is probably the game’s nadir, gloomy, slow, and unpleasant, but it doesn’t last long. For the rest of the adventure you’re just quietly running around, clearing things up, and progressing. You scan whatever you encounter, you collect whatever you find, it’s all very non-stressful, pleasant stuff.
This makes the Gunk something like a third person walking simulator but with enough gameplay to be engaging. There’s real platforming here, real combat, something resembling real puzzles, it’s all just easygoing and simple. You’re in it for the planet and the story. The plot itself is pretty straight forward and it has an environmental message that’s so obvious you’ll roll your eyes, but there’s enough to see and do that I never got bored. It’s the perfect game to play after a stressful day when you just want to escape for a bit but you don’t want to have to be all the way on. It’s a chill vibe game and it doesn’t try to be anything else.
Approached from that perspective, I liked The Gunk. It’s getting mediocre reviews but I think they’re undeserved. People may have been expecting something more difficult or engaging, but I don’t see why games always have to be tough or intense. Sometimes it’s nice to just go on an easy, chill, space adventure. That’s what The Gunk gives you. It lets you tidy up a planet, see a nice little plot through, enjoy some nice music and visuals, and wrap it all up in an afternoon. Is that worth the $25 asking price? That’s for you to decide. Is it worth the Game Pass download? It certainly was for me.
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